Researcher Bev Wright has a legal background. Now that she’s pursuing history, she wonders how the practices of one field applies to the other:
Last week, we explored the risks of trusting family tradition. First we looked at the reasons why problems exist. Then we offered a game plan to track those traditions and test their validity.
The “four cornerstones” of genealogy serve us well in our quests to find the truth about a family tradition:
Our recent Facebook discussion of the Wayback Machine triggered the inevitable question: “Just how DO we cite that source?”
Trust. That’s such a comforting word. It relieves so much stress. It lifts the burden of being always vigilant, the angst of worry whether something or someone will betray you, or the fear of making a wrong decision.
In historical research, the reality we deal with is 183 degrees different from the rose garden we’d prefer to work and live in. For us, trust is naïve. Trust creates problems of its own. Today’s three images demonstrate that, using an 1800 census record from Greenville County, SC.
